Eve of construction

Eve Selis talks rollerblading and how it lead to her new release

Selis saved her knees but tore a hammy, forcing her to rethink her life in music.

Stories about musicians suffering for their art are legion. Few of them involve rollerblading.

But Eve Selis says her new record, See Me with Your Heart, never would have happened if she hadn’t torn her hamstring while rollerblading at Mission Bay back in May 2014.

“I hadn’t bladed for two years, and I didn’t even stretch,” Selis says. “We had only gone a mile when I was cut off by a kid on a bike.”

"Beautiful Dreamer"

...off of Eve Selis's new record, See Me With Your Heart

Selis was wearing a skirt and wanted to avoid scabbing her knees. That caused her to shift in an awkward manner, which led to the torn hamstring and six months of rehab.

“The pain was worse than childbirth,” she laughs. “And it was a jolt. Pain is a lesson to be learned.”

Selis used the time off to figure out what she really wanted to do with music.

“For the last year or two, I did projects I liked but they weren’t Eve Selis. I was disconnected as an artist and as myself,” she says. “I was coming from a place of ‘lack,’ rather than fulfillment and desire.”

Reconnecting with her creative core started when she got an assignment to submit a song for an animated version of the classic children’s book, The Little Prince.

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“I got the original book at 17 and it changed my life,” she says. “It’s a sweet story about unconditional love.”

The song, which she co-wrote with Kim McLean and Andrew Rollins, didn’t get onto the soundtrack, but it became the title song of her new album.

Considering how pleased she is with See Me with Your Heart, was it worth the torn hamstring?

“It was my soul trying to get my attention by slowing me down, or else I’d end up a miserable, jaded musician — and we have plenty of those,” Selis says. “So, I’d do it again, but I’d let myself have the scabbed knees.”